"The paper explores the potential of big data analytics for researching anti-immigrant discourse. We emphasize contextualization as an essential element of research and follow a hybrid approach inspired by best practices of computational content analysis, combining human hermeneutic expertise with s
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upervised machine learning to classify a corpus of comments in online news communities in Singapore over 6 months (N=399,225). The paper highlights how big data analytics can provide a nuanced and critical apprehension of immigrant-related discourse in large social media datasets."
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"Public trust in institutions is a key prerequisite for effective crisis management. However, the rise of populism and misinformation in recent years made it increasingly difficult to maintain institutional trust. Despite this recognition, we still lack a systematic understanding of how exposure to
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misinformation and populist political orientation affect people’s trust in institutions. This paper fills this gap by adopting an original approach to trust, focusing on prospective trust rather than trust in the present, and by comparing four countries led by populist leaders during the pandemic – Brazil, Poland, Serbia, and the United States. The comparative design allows us to consider not only the role of individual-level factors (populist attitudes and misinformation exposure) but also the role of different approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic adopted in the four countries. The study utilizes data from a cross-sectional survey, carried out between November and December 2022 (N = 5000). Our findings show that populist attitudes are the most significant predictor of distrust in political institutions in all four countries. Believing in false information related to COVID-19, on the other hand, has a stronger impact on distrust in expert institutions – public health authorities, scientists, and medical professionals. The data also highlight the importance of local context and different approaches to handling the pandemic in the dynamics of trust. In Poland and Serbia, populist voters have more trust in both healthcare authorities as well as in political institutions; however, in Brazil and the United States, populist voters were more likely to distrust expert institutions." (Abstract)
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"Digital tools, such as safety apps, reporting portals, and chatbots, are increasingly being used by victim-survivors of gender-based violence to report unlawful activity and access specialized support and information. Despite their limitations, these interventions offer a range of potential benefit
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s, such as enhancing decisional certainty, promoting safety behaviors, and fostering positive psychological outcomes. In this paper, we introduce an innovative ‘design justice’ approach to the development of digital tools for addressing genderbased violence. Drawing on our experience of building a feminist chatbot focused on image-based sexual abuse, we argue that the integration of feminist principles throughout the design, content, and evaluation stages is crucial for mitigating the risk of harm and promoting positive outcomes. Our theory-informed and practice-led approach can help to guide the development of other digital tools for addressing gender-based violence. Nonetheless, more scholarly research is needed to investigate the use, efficacy, and impacts of such interventions, at the core of which should be interdisciplinary collaboration between subject matter experts, victimsurvivors, technical specialists, and other key stakeholders." (Abstract)
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"We undertook a systematic review to understand (i) how motherhood is represented across different media, (ii) how the modalities of media domains influence the motherhood representations that they offer, (iii) the gaps in recent research on the subject. We searched 7 databases for all studies inves
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tigating the representation of motherhood in media texts, in any geographical location, published after 31 December 2016. We identified 55 studies as relevant to the search criteria and undertook a thematic analysis of their findings. Our contribution is to offer a framework that summarizes and contrasts key themes of motherhood and tensions within and between motherhood ideologies as identified in different media domains." (Abstract)
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"This study explores self-visual presentation practices by female political candidates on Facebook during Kenya’s political campaigns that culminated in the national elections of 2022. The unit of analysis is the Facebook profile image of the women leaders. Image-centrism is operationalized as the
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extent to which ‘the image’ becomes the primary mode of self-presentation in political communication discourse. The study adopts a social semiotic approach to image interpretation postulated by Roland Barthes (1972) and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996). Using Kress and van Leeuwen’s approach, images are studied as ‘linguistic codes’ that have their own ‘grammatical’structure. Barthes’s approach explores the cultural dimension of the images. The argument here is that visual communication is context-bound, and the theoretical premise laid is that politics is given direction, shape, and impetus by the culture of a people. In order to understand visual political communication in Kenya, therefore, the study analyses and interprets images from the lens of the wider African cultural contexts within which this communication takes place. The overarching questions in this study include: a) How did female politicians in Kenya strategically use Facebook images for self-representation during the political campaigns in 2022? b) How have women politicians in Kenya interwoven cultural ideology with visual political communication on their Facebook pages? The ultimate conclusion is that political images not only serve as discourses for communicating political ideas and making political statements, but they also serve as self-representation modes as well as cultural manifestation codes that illuminate specific societal concepts." (Abstract)
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"Understanding the ubiquitous digitalization of everyday life and associated inequalities presupposes rich conceptualizations of the associated social dynamics. Accordingly, we investigate digital service domestication as a social dimension of people’s lives, building on concepts that center users
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’ everyday lives and agency. We adopt the perspective of people who find the use of digital services difficult and examine the hurdles they face when attempting access. Our data consists of semi-structured interviews with migrant women (N = 22) living in Finland, where most essential services are digitalized. The study highlights the societal boundedness of the participants’ agency, which we maintain is a key dynamic of inequality. We classify digital services in four categories, interactive communication services; information, media, and entertainment services; private customer services, and public health and social welfare services. The first two are voluntary digital services that did not create insurmountable barriers for the participants, but enabled them to conduct action they valued. By contrast, essential private and public services require mastering more complicated service technologies, a foreign language, and complex contents. Our results highlight how diversity-blind essential digital services produce and reinforce inequalities. Our analysis emphasizes the need for researchers to consider the coercive dimensions of digitalization." (Abstract)
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"Understanding the expectations, needs, and wants of young audiences, as well as inviting them to incorporate their experiences and perspectives into media production, are crucial tasks for today’s media producers. Drawing upon qualitative research in which more than seventy children eight to thir
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teen years old participated, this paper illuminates children’s experiences with radio broadcasts and the suggestions they make for improving them. To explore children’s media preferences and experiences, in the spring of 2019 we conducted thirteen focus groups that incorporated creative techniques and stimuli at four elementary schools located in geographically and demographically different areas of the Czech Republic. The research discovered that the radio was a part of children’s complex media experience. In some cases the children linked listening to it with the time they spent with their parents and grandparents. Even though they did not consider the radio their favourite medium, when they were invited to create their own radio programmes and content the children made a number of valuable suggestions for making radio more accessible and relevant to them. We argue that children should be considered as partners and invited to participate in a creative dialogue with media content creators." (Abstract)
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"98% ven televisión, 98% usan internet, 62% esuchan radio. 97 usan YouTube, 78% Whatsapp, 72% TikTok. 89% afirman que en el colegio les enseñaron sobre los medios de comunicación." (Página 1)
"A nivel de ciudades, las mayores diferencias se observan en la tenencia de cable e internet. En el primer caso se destacan Lima/Callao, Chimbote, Huaraz, Iquitos y Tarapoto, con porcentajes superiores a la media nacional (65%). En el segundo caso, se destacan por encima de la media nacional (81%) L
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ima/Callao, Arequipa, Chimbote, Huancayo, Ica y Tacna. Con respecto al uso de equipos y medios, los más extendidos a nivel general son internet y la televisión. Es significativo que el uso de internet haya igualado al de la televisión, que incluso es probable pueda ser mayor en el futuro. Por otro lado, el uso de la radio muestra una clara tendencia decreciente (95% en 2016, 81% en 2018 y 62% en la presente medición). Por segmentos no se observan diferencias muy significativas. Las plataformas y redes sociales más usadas por los NNA son Youtube, WhatsApp y Tik Tok, en mayor grado entre los adolescentes respecto a los NN, salvo en el caso de Youtube y la televisión por internet, en los que ambos grupos obtienen porcentajes similares de uso. El uso de Facebook registra una significativa tendencia decreciente respecto a estudios anteriores (86% en 2016, 75% en 2018 y 58% en la presente medición). Cabe comentar que este medio es más utilizado en el ámbito rural respecto a los demás segmentos evaluados, con 76%." (Conclusiones generales, página 109)
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"This paper addresses the role that communication and media interventions can play in fostering social cohesion among displaced populations in camp settings through a review of both practical and theoretical notions in this area. The multiple definitions available in the literature on social cohesio
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n do not come to a consensus on what this concept means. Yet, despite this lack of substance, reflecting on social cohesion in contexts of displacement has been a prevalent topic. Horizontal social cohesion, which is critical in protracted situations of encampment, is defined by UNHCR as the bond that ‘hold(s) people together within a community’. While a number of studies have focused on the social connection between host and displaced people, scarce attention has been paid to the dynamics and social fractures among displaced communities themselves. Yet, tensions both within and between groups of displaced people may be equally, if not more important to social cohesion than relationships with other groups. In order to begin to address this gap, a communicationbased
framework for humanitarian and development work on social cohesion in refugee camps is presented. Ultimately, the aim of this article is to offer a starting point for humanitarian agencies working in refugee camps to articulate the adoption of a communication-driven approach in their social cohesion programming." (Abstract)
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"Academic discourse frequently speaks of a gender violence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), suggesting a distinctive gender violence that is tied to a geographic location. Within the framework of a digital ethnography, this research examines whether gender activists operating in digital s
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paces themselves conceptualise and mobilise around their struggle using a regional lens, combining observations, a multimodal analyses of social media content, and interviews with 20 digital activists to do so. Challenging orientalist narratives, I centre the ontological agency of these (predominantly) young, (predominantly) women digital activists from and within the region in defining, contesting, and (re)producing the MENA within their resistance to gender violence. This timely intervention comes after a string of feminicides in June/July 2022 led to calls for a regional Women’s General Strike going viral across social media platforms. Following the strike’s slogan, ÊÖÇãä ÚÇÈÑ ááÍÏæÏ (Solidarity Across Borders), this research explores the potentialities and limitations of regional solidarities as a vehicle for building feminist public spaces. Contributing to debates within transnational feminist research regarding activism’s multiple spatialities, I examine how strike participants, through their framings of regional gender-based violence and the networks and identities built around said framings, navigate sameness and difference in dynamic and sometimes divisive ways. Within the strike context, we see a fragile regional public being formed that simultaneously challenges and reproduces narratives of gender violence in the MENA in ways that demonstrate both the salience of regionality and the importance of including activist voices in our regional constructions." (Abstract)
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"The Woman, Life, Freedom movement, beginning in September 2022, is a key chapter in the ongoing process of women’s rights activism in Iran. Social media has constituted a significant arena for asking for global solidarity with women in Iran since the initial days of this movement. The overall aim
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of this paper is to understand how TikTok users, including Iranian young women, have used the digital platform and transformed it into a virtual public space for media solidarity and transnational feminist activism. More precisely, it aims to shed light on how content creators, via their agency, rhetorically utilise and politicise the TikTok platform. In particular, we examine how they engage with audiences via the embodied form and affective performances in their attempt to persuade their audiences to viewership and solidarity action. The data in this paper consist of 107 top-ranked videos appearing under the hashtag #mahsaamini viewed through netnography, while the analytical method is multimodal rhetorical analysis with a focus on the mediality of the body in interaction. In addition, we adopt an embodied feminist framework and a decolonial perspective. The resulting analysis demonstrates how emotions function as one of the key elements in online mobilisation and protest in social media, not only as a motivational force but also as a part of the persuasive argument visually presented." (Abstract)
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"This study examines the portrayal of Syrians on Turkish Twitter between January and August 2021 through a big data analysis of more than 30,000 tweets. We employ the concept of online toxicity to differentiate between disinformation and hate speech and explore how they are embedded in the negative
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debates about Syrians on Twitter. Through opinion analysis, the study recognizes disinformation and hate speech patterns within tweets and questions the role they play in boosting anti-Syrian narratives, as well as the main actors behind them in the Turkish Twittersphere. The findings indicate that thediscourse about Syrians on Twitter was overwhelmingly negative, with both disinformation and hate speech playing a significant role. Furthermore, a considerable portion of the disinformation tweets could be traced back to opposition political actors, highlighting how negative sentiment on Twitter was not only expressive of generalized public resentment against Syrians but also instrumentalized for political purposes. Overall, this article demonstrates how Twitter contributes to the public debate about Syrians in Turkey, reproducing nationalist narratives and serving political agendas." (Abstract)
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"The global pandemic has adversely affected migrant workers psychologically and economically, leading to a poor quality of life. How the Malaysian media portrays this group during uncertainty remains unexplored. Aside from Eurocentric-focused scholarship, this study uniquely examines the representat
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ion of migrant workers in Malaysia. An inductive qualitative analysis of two Malaysian newspapers, Malay Mail (n = 36) and New Straits Times (n = 33), was conducted from January 2021 to August 2021. The findings show that the media portray migrant workers in a Janus-faced manner: They sympathetically represent them as vulnerable groups but also with an antagonistic stereotypical representation. This shows that media outlets adopt a more versatile approach to reporting on this group, which differs from previous studies. This study adds new perspectives and broadens the literature on the representation of migrant workers in ASEAN countries, such as Malaysia. It is also significant because it highlights subaltern erasures in the news discourses of marginalized groups, reducing xenophobia and racism toward them." (Abstract)
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"This study presents “platform-dependent creative labor” as a typology for exploring youth empowerment through the performance of creative labor on Bilibili, the most prevalent Chinese digital entertainment platform among young people. It employs digital ethnography and semistructured interviews
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to investigate the research question: How does the performance of creative labor on Bilibili affect youth empowerment in China? Findings show that youth empowerment is dynamically achieved through the performance of creative labor on Bilibili in economic, cultural, and sociopolitical terms. However, youth empowerment through platform-dependent creative labor is still faced with multifaceted challenges stemming from capitalist exploitation, stratification barriers, and nation-state censorship in China against the background of marketization, digitalization, and globalization. Overall, I argue that social media can be an empowering tool for the youth as content generators; however, it should be used more cautiously and skillfully." (Abstract)
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"The TikTok self-deprecating (SD) cyberculture is built on the exchange of SD memes among users who deprecate aspects of themselves on a daily basis. Predominantly composed of young people, SD memes on Indonesian TikTok reflect discourses on the daily struggles faced by young Indonesians. To explore
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and categorize the discourses, our research conducted a 6-month virtual ethnography, analyzing 786 videos observed through a conditioned TikTok’s For You Page. This study disclosed persistent discourses in the lives of young Indonesians. The article further discusses the aspects that support TikTok’s SD cyberculture in revealing private struggles that young people might hesitate to share with whom they have daily interactions." (Abstract)
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"This study explores parental views of early adolescents’ media use and parental mediation among urban middle-class families in mainland China through a sociocultural perspective. By interviewing 18 Chinese parents, this research found that parents’ concerns with media, such as children’s eyes
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ight, Internet addiction, and learning outcomes, align with the public discourse, shaped by the parenting philosophy and sociocultural priorities in contemporary Chinese families. Chinese parents tend to develop mediation strategies related to these concerns and refer to restrictive mediation in the context of Chinese guan parenting, a combination of control/demand and warmth/sacrifice, which provides a more nuanced perspective on restrictive mediation in terms of its actual practices. The research adds to the theory of parental mediation and highlights the need to study culturally specific parental perspectives and mediation to understand children’s media experiences. Further implications are discussed." (Abstract)
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"This study investigates the participation of Iranian women in hashtag feminism on Farsi Twitter as a means of resistance against marginalization. Using frameworks of hashtag feminism and media solidarities, the research analyzes Bidarzani—a grassroots feminist campaign—tweets and online convers
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ations around these tweets in 2020. Key themes include naming sexual violence experience, the transition from victim-blaming to systemic condemnation, and affective digital witnessing of pain. This moment of accumulation of personal narratives and users’ affective attunement in a context where rape discussions are silenced provides the possibility for collective survival. However, despite Bidarzani’s efforts to offer an intersectional feminist approach, limitations in users’ participation suggest a hierarchy of solidarity and deservingness, where affective practices are not equally expressed across class and geographical lines. Through these findings, the research contributes to the ongoing dialogue about the implications of digital feminism in the Middle East." (Abstract)
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